Friday, December 31, 2010

I've seen lots of folks doing 2010 recap posts, and I thought it might be fun to go back and look at all that happened in 2010, and share some blog posts of these highlights. We had a really fun year filled with lots of trips and great memories. And while this post shares some of the highlights, I definitely have to say that some of the best times have been not necessarily "blog worthy" but just the every day moments of living a life serving God and loving people. So here we go:

Welcomed our third nephew, baby Connor, into the world, made lots of Christmascookies, experienced a miniice storm, had a Christmas party at acastle, andcelebrated Christmas with our families - with one recap post still to come! And of course just found out I passed the PE exam and become a professional engineer.

I'll be back soon with our final Christmas wrap up post of Christmas with Derek's family, but I wanted to get this little post in here while it was still 2010 :) Hope everyone has a wonderful new year and I'll see you next year!

Thursday, December 30, 2010

After our little trip to PA to visit our new baby nephew Connor, we headed to Columbus to spend some time with my family. Unfortunately, I needed put in some hours at work, so Wednesday and Thursday I worked from my company's office in Columbus during the day. The evenings were much more fun with time spent visiting family, going out to eat and even finishing up some last minute shopping. Columbus has great restaurants and shopping, so those are 2 of my favorite things to do when we are in town. Also, while we were in town my mom made me an appointment to get a manicure and pedicure. I LOVE my pretty fingers and toes.

On Christmas Eve we had dinner J. Liu's which is a super yummy restaurant and it was my first time going there. Jason Liu, the owner was there walking around to tables and greeting everyone, which I thought was cool, especially since it was Christmas Eve. It began snowing while we were eating. After dinner we went to the candlelight Christmas Eve service at the church I grew up in. I love singing Silent Night in the glow of candles on Christmas Eve. It stopped snowing while we were in church but it snowed enough to recover the ground. Then we drove around my parents neighborhood and looked at Christmas lights. We finished up the evening with me, Derek and my parents reading Christmas books in the family room. I read the Berenstein Bears Christmas Tree, my dad read How the Grinch stole Christmas, and my mom read Twas the Night Before Christmas. Then my parents went to bed and Derek and I stayed up. I read Eloise at Christmas Time to him. Its one of my favorites, but a little long and my parents didn't have it in them to stay up for it. I fell asleep on the couch while Derek watched the Christmas Story. He woke me up when it was over and we went to bed.

We slept in a little on Christmas morning. When I woke up I saw a handmade Christmas card on my dresser. Derek made it for me while I was sleeping through the movie. Then we went downstairs and opened up presents with my parents. We got lots of fun gifts including a super soft and fuzzy north face jacket, a pair of red Toms, some pretty new pajamas, jeans sweaters and a new fancy pants camera! I am so excited to learnn how to use it and takes lots of pretty pictures. (I had some of the cutest subjects to test the new camera out on at Christmas with Derek's family, but you'll have to wait for those in another post - this one is getting pretty long.)

After opening up our gifts we ate some breakfast and then got the house ready for Christmas with my extended family, who all showed up at 12:30. We exchanged gifts, (I got more clothes and lots of other things I asked for :) and ate yummy Christmas lunch/dinner together. I love that all of my extended family lives so close and we are able to get everyone together for the holidays. I wish that I got to see them more often, but was happy that we were all able to be together on Christmas. After some quality family time we packed up and headed down to Northern Kentucky to celebrate Christmas again!

I had the next installment of our Christmas celebration wrap up all written out and ready to post today, but it will have to wait just a bit longer, because yesterday I found out that I passed the PE exam and am now an official licensed Professional Engineer! If you've been around here for a little while you know that I spent some of Auguest and nearly all of September and October studying for this fun little 8 hour exam over all things civil engineering, so to have passed it on the first go round is a huge relief and blessing. Thanks to all you who prayed for it, I know that helped carry me through that marathon of a day. I'll be back soon with more Christmas!

Tuesday, December 28, 2010

We're back in Lexington! We left the evening of Saturday the 18th after the Castle Christmas Party and drove up to Columbus. We spent the night at my parents house, left Moose with them and headed to Indiana, Pennsylvania to visit Kevin and Kayla and our newest nephew, Connor! We stayed there Sunday and Monday and headed back to Columbus on Tuesday. We stayed in Columbus until Saturday evening celebrating Christmas with my family. I also worked from our company's Columbus office Wednesday and Thursday so I didn't have to take an entire week of vacation. Saturday evening we packed up all our Christmas gifts and Moose and drove down to Northern Kentucky to celebrate Christmas with Derek's side of the family. We stayed in Northern Kentucky Sunday and Monday and drove back to Lexington today.

breath.

Needless to say, I have a lot to do around this place the next few days, but am also trying to get in as many hours at work as possible so I can take as little vacation time as possible. So I will be breaking up Christmas celebration details into multiple posts. It's more manageable that way and I have loads of pictures I need to get organized and put on the computer.

So for now I will `leave you with some pictures from our trip to PA and little bitty baby Connor.

Derek's Aunt and cousins holding Connor - ignore the Doritos bag ;)

Kevin, Kayla, Aunt and cousins with Connor:

Derek and Connor:

Connor is absolutely precious. I love just holding him while he sleeps. He is so sweet. And I love all of his dark hair. We got to see him again in Northern Kentucky so I will have some more baby Connor pictures coming soon, as well as details on the rest of our long Christmas trip.

Wednesday, December 22, 2010

A few weeks back I posted about Shutterfly's holiday cards, and how we decided to do a picture card this year. We got our amazingly talented friend Jenna to come over a take a couple of pictures with us and Moose. We are in love with how they turned out, and also with how the Christmas cards look. When they came in the mail we were so excited. So I thought I would share with you the 2010 Warnick family Christmas card:

Monday, December 20, 2010

Someone started building it a while ago for his wife, then they got divorced and it was never finished. In the last few years it was finished and has been turned into a bed and breakfast. Everytime we drive past it we always wonder what it looks like inside.﻿ So when I found out we were having out Christmas party for work there I was super pumped! I did my best to take pictures, but it was kind of difficult to capture it all. Here are a few phots from the evening.

Walking inside the walls:

The fountain covered in ice:

These were the only outside pictures since it was dark and hard to get a good pictures. This fountain was in the gardens where there was also a swimming pool and tennis courts. There was shuffle board up on the roof.

Inside:

Here are some pictures from one of the rooms:

I forgot to take a picture of the dining room where we ate and the billiards room where we hung out after dinner. It was all beautiful though. And I got to wear my favorite dress! (Ignore the mess in the background - we left for Columbus right after the party and so that was the messy state of us finishing packing up.)

Thank you PB for such a great Christmas party. Also - the food was AMAZING! They don't have a freezer there, so everything is made fresh from local ingredients. It was all so good I never wanted to stop eating. I really hope we go back next year!﻿

Thursday, December 16, 2010

One of the good things about living in central Kentucky is that we don't get a whole lot of snow. A few inches is a big deal around here. The not so good thing about living in central Kentucky is the ice storms. Growing up in Columbus, Ohio I had never experienced in ice storm in the first 18 years of my life. Then my sophomore year of college we got a big one. As in UK cancelled a few days of classes. Tree limbs were so weighed down with ice that they were touching the ground. Power lines sagged or even broke becuase of the weight of the ice. It was unlike anything I had ever seen. It was kind of like what you would picture the end of the world to look like.

A couple years ago, we had another pretty big ice storm. I think UK cancelled classes for that one too. My parents came down the following weekend, after a lot of it had already melted and were still amazed by the amount of ice on everything. There are trees in our neighborhood that still don't look the same because they lost so many limbs from the storm.

This morning, I am working from home because we have yet another ice storm. This one is not nearly so bad as the last two, but anytime you get ice accumulating on roads, trees and powerlines it's a little scary. Here are a couple pics from my yard.

And here is my coworker today - he is obviously having a very productive day!

Wednesday, December 15, 2010

Today I am a mess. It all started when I woke up before 6 am to some noise downstairs. I woke Derek up and asked if he heard it. He did not, but a few seconds later, there it was again. It was the dang smoke detector letting us know it was low on batteries. I also noticed that my clock was flashing 12:00. Meaning the power had been out, and had just come back on.

We went downstairs to change the smoke detector battery - only to find we did not have a replacement battery. Fail. So we took the battery out so the smoke detector would be quiet (safe, right?) I reset my alarm clock and went back to sleep very briefly until I had to get up for good.

While I was eating breakfast and reading I noticed that our lights kept dimming and then would get brighter. Well the power went back out in the middle of my breakfast. Which meant that I had to finish getting ready in the dark. Therefore, I look like a mess today. No make up, my pants are super wrinkly, and I am wearing light khaki pants and I put on an off white coat. So they are close to the same color but not quite, so it just looks terrible. Fail. And because it is freezing and there is snow on the ground I have just been wearing khaki pants to work so I can wear boots with them. Well today the pants I decided to wear look real goofy with my boots. Another fail. I feel like such a mess.

Also, as I was getting ready to leave I realized that my car was in the garage. Well, a few weeks back we had a power outage while I was home for lunch and I couldn't figure out how to open my garage door manually so my boss had to come to my house and show me so I could get back to work. So luckily I knew how to open the garage door manually this time. After I had shut it I realized I left something in the house. I decided to just unlock the front door and go in that way as that would be easier than reopening the garage door. And wouldn't you know when I got back inside the power was back on! But I was already running late. So today I am a mess. I will try to do better tomorrow.

Tuesday, December 14, 2010

This past weekend I made LOTS of cookies / Christmassy treats. Saturday I got together with some LCA girls and we made frosted sugar cookies, peanut blossoms, chocolate bon bon drops and chocolate peanut butter bars. Here are a few photos from all the fun:

the girls:﻿

and the cookies:﻿

Then on Sunday I made more frosted sugar cookies and peanut blossoms, chocolate covered pretzels and chocolate covered ritz crackers with peanut butter. I made cute little gift bags of cookies to give to neighbors, coworkers and our friends who lead Young Life with us at LCA.

I also brought lots of cookies to our yong life Christmas party last night, which looking back on we maybe shouldn't have had because the roads were a bit icy. But luckily no one killed themselves or wrecked their cars :)

I LOVE Christmas cookie baking and am so glad that I was able to get a whole weekend of it in.

Thursday, December 9, 2010

Hola Friends! It's Thursday! I'm sure you were already aware. But I've wanted it to be Thursday since Tuesday and so now that it is here I am feeling most joyous. The only thing that has been getting me through this week is my Pandora Christmas music station. It makes me happy and makes the hours fly by in happy Christmassy fashion. And I am getting spoiled because I have Friday off again this week! I usually get every other Friday off, and my last Friday off happened to fall on the day after Thanksgiving, which is a holiday. So I got to take my holiday last Friday when I should have worked, and now I have a third week in a row with no work on Friday. Next week will be rough when I must work 5 whole days in a row!

But I think I have some very fun plans for this weekend which include (hopefully) working out before I spend much of the weekend baking Christmas cookies! I have some new recipes I would like to try and some LCA girls who are willing to help - one of whom offered up her kitchen that has not one but TWO ovens and much more space than mine to prepare cookies as well as let them cool. I am most excited about this endeavor.

This weekend also begins Chritsmas party season for us. This weekend is Derek's work's Christmas party, and since he works at our church, that means its a big ol' potluck at the senior pastor's house, with a white elephant gift exchange included. Should be lots o fun!

And in honor of the Christmas party, I figured I would join up with Kristen, Natalie and Amber's Holly Jolly Blog Hop where today the theme is to share your favorite Christmas party dish. How appropriate seeing as this is what I will be bringing this weekend. Now I am kind of cheating because this hardly counts as a recipe, but last year everyone loved it, and it's so easy, so I will share my secret. I learned how to make this from Derek's mom and we'll call it Super Easy Yummy Bagel Dip.

Tuesday, December 7, 2010

Yesterday we were blown away by God's goodness. A little over a month ago we had a couple fun trips to the emergency room for Derek. Don't worry, everything is fine. But we ha no idea what the financial ramifications would be of 2 trips to the emergency room, an x-ray, ct scan, bloodwork, etc. I was fully anticipating meeting the yearly deductible and then some. But last night, the bills came in the mail. And they were literally less than 25% of what I was hoping for. A couple of co pays and an additional $12.65 bill. That's it! We did a happy dance and thanked God. So now we have the joy of figuring out what to do with that extra money I had put aside. We will definitley be giving a lot of it right back to God!

Another way God was awesome yesterday, was that my camera was found! I was seriously getting ready to order a new point and shoot from target.com, and when we went to Young Life last night, the family whose house we have it at found the camera! So there's another extra $100.

On top of my giddiness over God taking care of us last night, I was also super excited because I got to share the good news of the gospel at Young Life last night. This is always challenging, because we do Young Life at a private Christian school {read: these kids are aware of the story of Jesus and his dying on the cross} and a lot of them believe that because they go to Christian school they are indeed Christians. They're lives, however do not always reflect this. So how do you tell a group of students who is all too familiar with the story of God's redeeming love that they don't really get it? {Obviously there are some students who very much get it. I don't want to make it sound like I think they are all lost.}

Recetly I read the book Prodigal God by Timothy Keller. Its a book all about the parable of the lost son. You can find that story in Luke 15 starting at verse 11 if you are not familiar with the story. In this story a father has 2 sons and the youngest comes to him and asks him for his inheritance (even though the father has not yet died). He takes the money, leaves and lives it up until he has spent it all and has nothing left. He comes back to ask his father if he would hire him to work, since he is pretty much starving at this point. The father gladly accepts him back into the family and throws a feast in his honor. Most people would look at this story and see the obvious parallels between us sinners and the younger brother, and the father as our loving God.

The only problem is many LCA students don't relate to the younger brother. They've never really done anything wrong in their lives. Enter the end of the story, when the older brother, who has stayed and been faithful finds out that his screw up of a younger brother is just allowed to come home with no consequence. He's furious. It's not fair!

In the book Prodigal God Keller talks about how a lot of us relate more to the older brother. And this is what I shared with them last week. He points out however, that the older brother is just as lost as the younger brother. While the younger brother straight up told the father he didn't want him, he just wanted his stuff, the older brother hung around and did everything for the father, with the expectation that because he had been so faithful, his father owed him something and should do what he wanted. A lot of us hav ethis sort of relationship with God. We think that because we have been good, God owes us the things in life we want. Neither brother in this story loved the father, they both just wanted his stuff. And I explained both of these attitudes, the selfish younger brother and the self righteous older brother, sin.

And so last night I got to share how Jesus came to be the true older brother that was missing in the story. The older brother that not only went out to find the missing younger brother, but also to bring him back into the family at his own expense. One thing I never realized before reading this book, is that when the younger brother asked for his inheritance, the father gave him the 1/3 of the estate that was his. So everything that remains will eventually go to the older brother. So, if the younger son is to be brought back into the family, his new inheritance must come from the remaining 2/3 that belongs to the older brother.

And so this is the love of Christ. He came to earth to seek us out when we were lost (whether in selfishness or slef-righteousness) and then paid the price to bring us back into the family out of his own inheritance. And I got to explain that when we truly understand what it is Christ has done for us, our lives will never be the same. Going to LCA, these kids know of the suffering that Jesus endured on the cross. What they may not know, is that the physical suffering was nothing compared to the suffering of being separated from the father. And that is what is in store for us if we don't take Jesus up on his offer to bring us back into the family. And if we can truly grasp that, we will realize that everything we ever thought we wanted or thought was important, is absolutely nothing in view of the opportunity to have a restored relationship with God.

And so I hope that some lives will be changed because of this extravagant love that God has shown us through Christ. I know that my life will never be the same. If you get the change to read Prodigal God I highly recommend it. It definitely changed the way I looked at that story, as well as my relationship with God.

Monday, December 6, 2010

I've decided that I am intimidated to blog on Mondays. I think it stems from not being sure what to blog about. Sometimes there is miscellany monday, but I don't even have anything random to say. Then there is the temptation to blog about my weekend, but I feel like that can get kind of boring. Not that my weekend was boring, it was actually a lot of fun, but not in a "a lot of fun to read about" sort of way {Although one of the highlights was getting to go to my friend Angie's sons 1st birthday party. It was super cute and she did an awesome job of decorating and planning it. You can see pictures here.} So a lot of weeks I just skip blogging on Monday.

Today, however I am going to blog about how there were cookies and brownies in the break room this morning! How exciting is that?!?! At about 10:00 I went in to fill up my mug with water (I don't do coffee and only drink tea if I'm real tired and need some caffeine) and there on the table were cookies and brownies. So I grabbed a cookie and took it back to my desk and ate it. Then after lunch I ate a brownie. I figured it was ok since I have stopped buying cookies in an effort to quit eating them after every meal. What a treat!

Then my credit card statement for my corporate card came and I found out that I accidentally bought Christmas gifts with my work credit card. Fail. Not the end of the world because I can just write a check and pay for it, but still, I'm an idiot some times.

Good news though! Tonight I get to share THE Good News at Young Life. I get to tell my LCA friends about God's riciculous love for them and the reckless grace He offers us. Please pray I would get out of the way and God would speak through me. Because clearly, my brain does not always function properly and if this thing is dependent on me we are all in trouble.

Thursday, December 2, 2010

This is a tough one for me.My favorite Christmas Carol is probably O Come All Ye Faithful. My favorite Christmas CD is proably Relient K: Let It Snow Baby... Let it Reindeer.

Now as for my actual favorite Christmas song, this is a tough one, but one that I could listen to over and over again is Trans-Siberian Orchestra's Christmas Canon Rock. I love the electric guitar in it. And in this video, the singers are hilarious with their body motions to the rhythm of the song.

Wednesday, December 1, 2010

So I've missed the middle 5 days of the 12 Days of Christmas Blog Challenge, so I thought I would do a little catch up post. And it's snowing outside, which makes it all the more Christmas like!

Day 4: Tips to a budget friendly holiday season

Besides the usual advice of having a plan for who you will buy for and how much you will spend and sticking to it, one other fun thing I recently found out about is ebates.com. Have you been there? It's free. Basically you sign up and then when you want to buy things online, you go to ebates.com first, go to their directory of stores, click on the website you are looking for and then buy whatever you want. Once your transaction is complete, and your item has been shipped to you, you get a percentage of your purchase credited back to your account. So say you want to buy something from the Gap. Go to ebates, find the Gap, and click on it. It will take you directly to the Gap's website. You will see that you get 8.0% back. So if you spend $100 at Gap.com, you will get $8.00 credited to your account. How awesome is that? And it takes you directly to the company's website, so you can use promo codes, gift cards, etc. as well. And you get $5.00 just for signing up and making your first purchase. The % you get varies from store to store, but they have tons of stores.

Day 5: Favorite Holiday Movie / TV Special

Well #1 on the list would have to be Elf. It's a classic. But I also love White Christmas, The Holiday and the original How the Grinch Stole Christmas.

Day 6: Gift Ideas

I've already made a pretty extensive list and sent it off to my family. We do Christmas lists. I don't understand why people don't. It makes it so much easier to get someone you love a gift you know they will want. One thing I didn't put on my list because it's pretty expensive but that I would love to get is a DSLR camera. Especially since I am without a camera.

Another item I would like that I forgot to put on my list is a new trash can. I know, exciting! But I broke ours and would love a shiny one like this:

Day 7: Easy DIY Craft with Pictures

Well this will be difficult since I have no camera and am not the craftiest person in the world. But a super easy craft, I don't even know if you could call it that would be to take pinecones and spray paint them and add some glitter. It would end up looking something like this:

Day 8: Least Favorite thing about the holidays

I wish we didn't have to split time with our families. I love being with both my family and Derek's family and I wish we could be 2 places at once and spend Christmas Eve and Christmas day with both families. Also, we are getting better about it as we get older, but it's still hard to decide where we will go and when.

Day 9: Favorite Holiday Recipe

Choosing a favorite is hard. For a main dish it would have to be sweet potato casserole. Mix 3 cups of mashed sweet potatoes, 1/2 cup butter, 1 cup brown sugar, 2 beaten eggs and 1 tsp of vanilla together. Put it in a 1 1/2 to 2 qt casserole dish and top with 1 cup chopped pecans, 1/3 cup flour, 1/3 cup butter, and 1/2 cup brown sugar all mixed together. Bake at 350 for 30 minutes. It's delish!